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Insulating interlocked ferroelectric and structural antiphase domain walls in multiferroic YMnO3

Nature Materials volume 9, pages 253–258 (2010)Cite this article

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Abstract

Hexagonal YMnO3 shows a unique improper ferroelectricity induced by structural trimerization. Extensive research on this system is primarily due to its candidacy for ferroelectric memory as well as the intriguing coexistence of ferroelectricity and magnetism. Despite this research, the true ferroelectric domain structure and its relationship with structural domains have never been revealed. Using transmission electron microscopy and conductive atomic force microscopy, we observed an intriguing conductive ‘cloverleaf’ pattern of six domains emerging from one point—all distinctly characterized by polarization orientation and structural antiphase relationships. In addition, we discovered that the ferroelectric domain walls and structural antiphase boundaries are mutually locked and this strong locking results in incomplete poling even when large electric fields are applied. Furthermore, the locked walls are found to be insulating, which seems consistent with the surprising result that the ferroelectric state is more conducting than the paraelectric state. These fascinating results reveal the rich physics of the hexagonal system with a truly semiconducting bandgap where structural trimerization, ferroelectricity, magnetism and charge conduction are intricately coupled.

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Figure 1: The crystallographic structure of domains and domain boundaries in ferroelectric hexagonal YMnO3.
Figure 2: The cloverleaf domain patterns in ferroelectric YMnO3.
Figure 3: The poling effect on cloverleaf ferroelectric domains.
Figure 4: The evolution of conductive domain patterns with various bias voltages, and conduction profiles of ferroelectric domains and domain boundaries.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank S. W. Fackler (Rutgers), J. J. Cheong (Columbia), V. Kiryukhin (Rutgers) and M. Tanimura (NISSAN ARC) for useful discussions. This work was supported by NSF-DMR-0804109 and NSF-DMR-0844807.

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  1. T. Choi and Y. Horibe: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Rutgers Center for Emergent Materials and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, USA

    T. Choi, Y. Horibe, H. T. Yi, Y. J. Choi, Weida Wu & S.-W. Cheong

  2. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, USA

    H. T. Yi & S.-W. Cheong

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  1. T. Choi
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Contributions

S.-W.C. grew single-crystalline specimens, designed the research project and supervised the experiments. T.C. carried out CAFM experiments with the help of W.W. and carried out electrical transport measurements with the help of Y.J.C. Y.H. collected TEM data and analysed structural properties. H.T.Y. prepared CAFM specimens. S.-W.C., T.C. and Y.H. co-wrote the paper, and all authors discussed the results.

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Correspondence to S.-W. Cheong.

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Choi, T., Horibe, Y., Yi, H. et al. Insulating interlocked ferroelectric and structural antiphase domain walls in multiferroic YMnO3. Nature Mater 9, 253–258 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2632

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